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The TalentCulture Team

TalentCulture’s New Look: Announcing Our New Website!

We’re thrilled to announce that our newly revamped website is now live! In keeping with our mission, it offers the insights that empower HR, the community, and workforce to become better leaders and partners in the modern workplace. But now it offers much more.

We kicked off the redesign with some key objectives: to feature our expanding services, boost site navigation and accessibility, add more relevant articles and inspiration, and put HR innovations at your fingertips. You’ll find plenty new and improved, from the HR Tech Awards to the Newsletter Archives; from Webinars to the great featured content so many of you come to TalentCulture to read. You can still download our #WorkTrends podcasts wherever you listen, customize your search, and access our media kit and contributor guidelines as well. HR Resources gives even more opportunities to immerse yourself in TalentCulture — and become part of our extended and treasured community of writers, leaders, thinkers, experts and practitioners. 

We understand that user experience is vital — more so than ever — and we’re so proud of this new platform. So please, go explore. We cordially invite you to click around, learn, experience the site, and grow your network by joining our community. We’re excited you’ve stopped by, and we’d love to hear from you!

Photo: Constantinos Panagopoulos

#WorkTrends HR + Marketing: Employer Brand Superteam

Meghan M. Biro brought not one but two guests to the #WorkTrends podcast this week: Diane Adams, Sprinklr’s Chief Culture and Talent Officer, and Grad Conn, Sprinklr’s Chief Experience and Marketing Officer. The topic: what happens when HR and marketing really work together on talent strategies. In this case, the result is nothing short of alchemy. The two will be appearing at the upcoming HR Transform conference, later this year. “Creating a Winning Culture Where People Thrive Personally & Professionally.” The #WorkTrends audience got a taste of things to come.

Diane and Grad Conn talked about the approaches they’re using at Sprinklr to attract engage and retain top talent — which openly draws on the best of marketing and HR in order to build a workplace culture that people can be proud of — and are. They shared marketing strategies that cross over from customer engagement to candidate and employee engagement. Brand messaging takes on a whole new meaning when it has to do with the employer — but when your employees are on board, the benefits extend directly to your customers as well.

Diane talked about how they built a dynamic partnership between HR and marketing, establishing values for Sprinklr that drove stellar employee as well as customer experiences. She said, “We referred to it as The Sprinklr Way —  our foundation for how we live, how we work, and how the values of our employees and our company are then transcended externally to our customers. Happy employees, happy customers.” 

“People sometimes think of marketing as just an external function. But you have to sell to your own employees just as much as you need to sell to customers,” Grad pointed out.  

This was a conversation that hit home: employer brand isn’t just an idea, it needs to be a reality in every organization. In this era when your employer brand is only as good as the outside world’s perception, crafting an authentic and appealing culture is a smart business strategy. As Meghan noted, given today’s focus on crafting great workplace cultures, “it all makes sense.” 

Listen to the full conversation and see our questions for the upcoming #WorkTrends Twitter Chat. And don’t forget to subscribe, so you don’t miss an episode. 

Twitter Chat Questions 

Q1: Why are some employers losing ground at attracting and engaging talent?  #WorkTrends
Q2: What strategies can help organizations create a great workplace culture? #WorkTrends
Q3: How can leaders help their organizations better bring in and keep top talent? #WorkTrends

Find Diane Adams on Linkedin and Twitter
Find Grad Conn on Linkedin and Twitter

This post is sponsored by HR Transform.

Hire a Marketer for Your HR Department

If there’s one trend that is picking up speed in today’s organizations, it’s the realization that keeping departments in separate silos isn’t the most efficient way to do things. Cross-departmental collaboration is helping companies tap into the skill sets of their talent in new and exciting ways. For example, consider how well HR and marketing work together. When you think about the fact that HR handles recruitment and, as part of that, is becoming more focused on managing the employer brand—hiring a marketer to join your HR team makes sense.

According to the Harvard Business Review, 40 percent of CEOs surveyed said they are relying on employer branding to secure their long-term hiring needs. And when it comes to branding, who better than a marketer to step in and take the lead?

Explore some of the reasons why your HR team could use a marketer:

HR is rooted in marketing principles. In a way, the HR department plays an integral role in shaping the company culture, from the way the employer brand is represented during the recruiting process, to the how employees perceive the company. As EmotiveBrand.comexplains, “The authenticity of the employer brand depends on HR and marketing working together to create an employee experience that is true to the brand.”

Marketers know how to nurture relationships online. The nature of marketing is such that marketers tend to be up on the latest technology tools and platforms to help build customer relationships, says Rajveer Gangwar on LinkedIn. Just as marketers use social media to engage customers, such tactics can—and should—be applied to recruitment and retention efforts. Having a marketing-minded HR team member can help you stay on the cutting-edge.

Employer reputation management will help with talent acquisition. In addition to putting forth a corporate image, it’s important to stay tuned to the conversation. According to a 2016 Glassdoor survey, 69 percent of people said they were likely to apply to a job if the company hiring manages its employer brand actively (e.g., responds to reviews, updates their profile, shares updates on the culture and work environment). Having a marketing person on your HR team can ensure that you are addressing employee reviews and other feedback appropriately and promptly.

A marketer can help maintain a consistent voice across all channels. Chances are, you already have a great team of marketers on staff who work hard to establish branded collateral, so shouldn’t HR benefit from that as well? Dell is just one of many organizations that realized an HR partnership with marketing was a win-win all around. Not only did the pairing allow for a more consistent employer brand identity, but having marketing step in allowed the HR pros to remain focused on the recruiting tasks that they did best.

In-house marketing can help HR improve employee morale. You don’t want to wait until your employees leave your organization before finding out what they really thought of the company. Keeping the lines of communication open and listening to the digital conversations(as marketers do) can provide valuable insight as to what drives and motivates your employees. In turn, you can determine which HR programs are working and if you should implement new ones.

Learn the data and analytics ropes from marketing. Today’s marketers have more data and insights to inform their decisions than ever before, and so does HR—if it can learn how to track and measure performance, that is. Bringing on a marketer to track relevant metrics can help HR improve employee engagement.

From recruitment to employee relations to retention, HR is more complex than ever before. If you have the opportunity to add someone to your HR team, consider someone who can think like a marketer and elevate your employer brand.

Photo Credit: teamgivingsacramento Flickr via Compfight cc

This post was first published on V3Broadsuite.

Report Says Marketing Hiring Will Increase This Year

Digital marketing is on the rise in recent years, so it makes sense that marketing professionals will be increasingly in demand in the near future. And McKinley Marketing Partners recently provided evidence of this when it released the 2017 Marketing Hiring Trends Report. The findings are based on the company’s survey of 314 marketers, and they offer encouraging information, like the fact that hiring in this industry rose by 19 percent from 2015 to 2016. Want more reasons to love the fact that you’re in marketing? Check out what else McKinley Marketing Partners’ report found.

What’s Going on with Marketing Hiring in 2017?

One of the most important findings in this report is that 44 percent of respondents said they plan to hire more marketers. In 2016, just 28 percent of marketers said the same thing, so expect there to be growth in marketing jobs this year. In particular, medium companies that make between $10.1 million and $50 million annually will be doing the most hiring this year.

And while 78 percent of respondents said they don’t have any job cutbacks planned this year, some companies will be cutting back in certain areas. The areas that are most likely to be affected include creative services, traditional marketing, and marketing operations.

When it comes to traditional marketing in particular, which services are most likely to be cut back this year? Well, traditional advertising tops the list, followed by direct mail, print, broadcast, direct response, and telemarketing. So, if these happen to be your top skills right now, consider learning some new ones to remain employable in the marketing field.

What Are the Most In-Demand Marketing Skills This Year?

If you’re looking to switch gears to become more competitive in the marketing industry, you should know that 56 percent of the survey respondents said they plan to hire professionals with digital marketing knowledge. This means you should be adept at the following skills, in order of importance:

  • Digital advertising
  • Content creation and curation
  • Content strategy
  • Social media
  • Email
  • SEO/SEM
  • Web development
  • Display marketing

All of these skills can increase your chance of getting a good job in marketing, since employers are looking for these more than ever when hiring.

The second most important area to be experienced at is creative services, since 35 percent of survey respondents said they’ll be hiring professionals in this area. The most in-demand skills within creative services include:

  • Graphic design
  • Web design
  • Visual design
  • Copywriting
  • Web production

What You Should Know If You’re Hiring Marketing Professionals

If you’re a hiring manager looking for experienced marketers this year, the competition may be fierce because the demand exceeds supply in most areas of marketing. For example, this study found that the demand for new employees in the digital marketing area is 56 percent, but the supply is just 24 percent, since that’s the amount of marketers who at least occasionally look for new job opportunities.

It’s not much better in the creative services area, where the demand is 35 percent and the supply is 27 percent. The numbers are similar in marketing operations, research and analysis, and communications, though the supply and demand are at least only a few percentage points apart.

The only area where supply matches demand is relationship management. If you’re looking for a marketer with product marketing expertise, it should be easier, since demand is 20 percent and supply is 21 percent. And if you’re hiring in the traditional marketing field, demand is only 19 percent and supply is 24 percent.

So how can you stand out to the top marketing professionals when you’re hiring? You need to keep in mind the main motivation for marketers who switch jobs, and that’s money. About 45 percent of survey respondents said they’d consider a job change if they were offered a higher salary. The only other perk that came close is career advancement, since 25 percent said they might switch jobs for this benefit.

Aside from offering a competitive salary, you should know that 86 percent of respondents said they also expect health insurance from their employer, including dental and vision coverage. About 80 percent want paid time off for vacation. Other benefits they would like include:

  • Casual dress in the office – 64 percent
  • Paid sick days – 59 percent
  • Telecommuting – 42 percent
  • Floating holidays – 40 percent
  • Office perks (free snacks and drinks, game room, TV, etc.) – 34 percent
  • Flex time – 31 percent
  • Summer hours – 19 percent
  • Every other Friday off work – 11 percent

If you can offer not only a competitive salary and health benefits, but also the option to telecommute or at least take more paid days off, you’ll be more likely to draw in the talented marketing professionals you seek.

Are you a marketer looking for a new job this year, or part of a company looking to hire? How do you feel about the information in the 2017 Marketing Hiring Trends Report? Let us know if you’re excited or apprehensive about the state of hiring in the marketing field this year.

A version of this was first posted on marketingscope.com

Teen Dreams VS Workforce Realities

Astronaut. Teacher. Ballerina. Doctor. Singer. Few people say “I want to grow up and work in an office,” yet 15 percent of Americans have office/administrative jobs (the largest of 22 segments of the U.S. labor force, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics). The question is–how much disparity exists between the jobs we dream of and the jobs we’ll most likely get? We polled more than 400 teenagers to find out.

Teen Dreams VS Workforce Realities Infographics

Perhaps it’s no surprise that 20 percent of teens who responded said they want to be involved in arts, design, entertainment, sports, and media occupations. Jobs in those fields not only seem fun, but sports, media, and the arts are how teens spend their free time–it makes sense that they’d want to work in a field aligned with their interests. In addition to being perceived as cool jobs, positions in media, art, design, sports, etc., can be very lucrative as well.

Getting paid to do what you love–isn’t that everyone’s dream? Unfortunately, only 2 percent of jobs in the current workforce fall under this category, which means at some point, most adults have to decide to earn a living doing something more readily available and realistic.

Another popular dream job is in the healthcare field. 15 percent of respondents say they’d like a job as healthcare practitioners. Jobs like doctor, nurse, veterinarian, pharmacist, and dentist are considered noble, prestigious, high-earning occupations. Help people and get paid well? Who wouldn’t jump at that opportunity? However, the rigor, length, and incredible expense of additional schooling are some of the biggest deterrents to why only 6 percent of people who want to become a healthcare practitioner actually do.

Some categories are low on the dream-meter, perhaps because the jobs don’t seem glamorous enough, or ambitious enough. Few might say “I want to be in retail sales when I grow up,” or “I want to go to college so I can work in food service, but these types of jobs make up a combined 18 percent of the American workforce. The fact is that there’s a lot of behind-the-scenes work that goes into the convenient, fast-paced lives we take for granted. While no teens responded that they want a job in installation, maintenance, and repair occupations, the infrastructure of our daily lives would collapse without these types of occupations.

From carpenters to marketers, every industry plays an integral part in keeping the American workforce buzzing along.

A version of this was first posted on crresearch.com

Photo Credit: aleksey_mezentsev Flickr via Compfight cc

Entrepreneurship Is A Sweet Deal

The topic of entrepreneurship fascinates me. I often wonder what makes one person seek out entrepreneurial opportunities while others are content to be employees. I believe for some people the real and perceived risks of business ownership is too overwhelming for them to fathom. For others, there’s the immense commitment of time and resources and not to mention the financial implications. Being an entrepreneur or an employee both have their risks, it’s just a matter of which setting is more comfortable for you and where you see yourself fit.

I had the opportunity to discuss this topic with Elisabeth Vezzani, the Co-founder and CEO of Sugarwish. During an inspirational conversation we talked about the gratifying aspects, along with work-life balance issues entrepreneurs face as a business owner.

Ms. Vezzani, like many people, gained her experience from years in a corporate environment, specifically the staffing industry. During this time, she noticed a gap in the corporate gift market and created a company called Sugarwish, a startup that brings a revolutionary and sweet approach to gifting.

While working in the staffing industry, she sought out clever and unique gifting services to satisfy her own business needs and was disappointed with what was available. She recognized the need and from there decided on a type of gift that appeals to most people and envisioned how these gifts of recognition and thanks could be easy and fun to give and get. According to Elisabeth, “It all started as a conversation I was having with a friend about the lack of clever gifts that were available. I wanted to be able to give a gift that I would want to receive.”

Creating something to satisfy personal need then building it out to offer to others makes a lot of sense to me and one of the elements in the “secret sauce.” You have an idea. However, the change of moving from a position where a consistent source of income coupled with benefits and work that you enjoy doing, is still a big leap over to entrepreneurship.

Still desiring to know more about what differences someone experiences, I asked Elisabeth about the biggest adjustments she encounters between her corporate leadership position and self-employment. As with most entrepreneurs I’ve spoken with, her comments were not surprising. “The biggest difference with self-employment is that there’s no “off button.” states Elisabeth, “Much of it is my total love for Sugarwish… and my inability to stop thinking about what we can do better, or what we can do next. I want to be sure we are making Sugarwish all that it can be, and see it reach its full potential.” 

Ah, the “off button.” This comment makes something come to mind. I see entrepreneurship much as I view parenthood. A full-time, no holds barred, in-for-a-penny in-for-a-pound commitment. Another element of the “secret sauce.” But wait… this sounds like work-life imbalance more than symmetry. According to Elisabeth, “The balance is a little tricky, because that separation line is really blurred. Sugarwish fits into both my work and life categories. There is no “leaving it at the office”. There just can’t be. Keeping balance (and my sanity) requires a little more juggling, a little more understanding from family and friends… and a whole lot less sleeping.” There it is! There’s no separation from personal to business, because for an entrepreneur, their business is personal and so meaningful to them.

But surely, something is a driving force for people bitten by the entrepreneurial bug. They must get more out of the experience than what meets the eye. I can understand the self-satisfaction of “building” something and watching it grow, much like how people who love to garden enjoy seeing the fruits of their efforts develop. The gratification appears to run deep, but understanding the particulars of what is most impactful is probably personal. When I asked Elisabeth about her perspective on the gratification return on investment, she was adamant.

“One of the most gratifying aspects of my job is being able to watch Sugarwish continue to grow,” states Elisabeth, “and seeing it develop from a conversation, to an idea, to an initial website, to a thriving company has been unbelievably satisfying and inspiring. Another, is knowing that what we originally set out to do, specifically, delivering happiness, is working. We get to see how kind, thoughtful, generous and just generally awesome people are to each other… each and every day. All we hear is the good stuff and it never, ever gets old. It is literally the best job in the world.”

Question answered. I appreciate her impassioned response and obvious love of what she does for work. The most important element in the “secret sauce” revealed… a passion for what one does for work.

This desire for independent creativity and drive doesn’t need to be as an entrepreneur. Many people don’t build an empire, yet they still find happiness in what they do and look forward to doing it… every day. In Elisabeth’s case, she found her passion, built her business and set high bars to improve its performance to deliver more gratification, not only for herself, but for the people who interact with her company. For her entrepreneurship is a sweet deal with plenty of cowbell.

Image credit: StockSnap.io

TalentCulture Corner Office Talks Marketing, Branding And Innovation With Brian Carter

In this Corner Office article, Cyndy Trivella, Events Manager with TalentCulture, spoke with Brian Carter, Founder and CEO of The Carter Group and Co-author of the best-selling book The Cowbell Principle. Brian is one of the most innovative people in business, and a marketing and branding genius. He went from a state of unemployment to building one of the biggest and most successful non-traditional agencies in the social marketing space.

Cyndy and Brian talked about the struggles people face with marketing, managing their brands, the challenges of business ownership, and value of innovating responsibly. In line with our series, this article will highlight the perspective and experience of someone who has made the move to the “corner office.”

Cyndy: Brian, I can understand why you easily engage with people. You always have a thoughtful way of explaining things and I know our readership will appreciate your comments. So let’s begin with you. What are the top challenges you face in your current role?

Brian: We’re currently facing growth challenges in my consultancy, the Brian Carter Group. We’re hiring and streamlining our back-office, CRM, accounting and client onboarding processes. And because we don’t want to use the typical agency model, we emphasize only having experts doing our clients’ work. So we grow personnel slowly, which means a lot of work for each of our experts. This means morale, communication and efficiency are critical to our clients’ success and to ours. I work directly on our communication systems and make sure we stick to processes that will keep us efficient.

Cyndy: I applaud you for breaking the mold on the stereotypical agency model and it sounds like a lot of high-quality work is being produced because of it.

So in full transparency, the thing that brought you to my attention, well over a year ago, was your book, The Cowbell Principle. You and your co-author, Garrison Wynn, take an interesting approach to offering career advice in the book using the cowbell to help people recognize their unique gifts, their personal brand and how to capitalize on them to find success and happiness. So tell me why is finding and sharing our personal cowbell so difficult?

Brian: A cowbell is a passion, talent or skill that you enjoy and so do others. To start, a lot of people don’t develop their skills, or don’t know what their talent is, or don’t pursue their talent. And sometimes they have emotional hang-ups about the thing they love or pursuing what they love.

Conversely, there are people who believe they should pursue what they love no matter what effect it has on others— that’s not a cowbell either. It has to be something that is valuable to others.

Honestly, a lot of people want to do “good-enough” work and go home and watch Netflix. I feel that temptation, too. Finding or developing a cowbell requires a desire for greatness and a rejection of mediocrity. If you’re not driven by something, or toward something, you won’t excel and you won’t stand out.

Cyndy: What you’ve just said is very impactful, especially about not understanding our skills, strengths and gifts. No doubt, some people struggle with brand identity and marketing their attributes. What’s odd is, I see this same problem affecting companies and in many ways they suffer with the same issues. So why do companies struggle with marketing their brand?

Brian: First off, a lot of companies don’t have a brand, or at least not an exceptional, interesting, developed one. And just because you created a logo doesn’t mean you have a brand. There are a lot of crappy logos out there.

Branding is about identity. Who are you? Who is your company? How are you unique? Just as with the cowbell question, a lot of people don’t have an answer to the uniqueness question. They aren’t doing anything unique.

It takes work to find that thing. Exploration. A commitment to a difficult search within.

And once you find it, the guts to stick to that brand. Not wanting to be all things to all people. Being willing to turn some people off in order to turn others on. That’s scary, it really is. But leaders need to have that kind of courage. And when you don’t have courage, you don’t have a great brand.

Once you have that brand, marketing it is easy — if you know what it is, you should be able to convey it in video and blog posts and other media. If you can’t, you may not really know what your brand is yet.

These days, it’s a good idea to let customer feedback influence how your brand develops. When you see what Facebook posts they like and don’t like, which ones they share or don’t share that tells you which parts of your brand resonate with customers and which ones don’t. If you want your brand to move customers to take action, you need to pay attention to how they respond to it.

Cyndy: Great advice to people and companies, alike. Without a unique value proposition, it’s impossible to distinguish one person or company from another. So I have a last question. If innovation keeps companies relevant and timely, why do some companies and employees believe business should continue as “we’ve always done it that way?”

Brian: You should never innovate just because something is new. The innovation has to be better than the old way, and the benefits of adopting the innovation have to outweigh the costs of changing.

Every time you change how things are done in your company, you create inefficiencies, even if they’re temporary. And you may find that some of your employees just can’t adjust. They might quit or you might have to let them go, which is costly. And further, there’s a cost to replacing them.

So it’s important to ask if the innovation is worth it. Is it going to last? Who is going to have trouble adapting to it? How big of a problem will that be?

It’s always hard to get people to change, and there are smart ways to get them to adapt, so you’ll never be able to avoid the grumbling and inefficiencies that come with change, but make sure the change is worth it before you implement it.

Cyndy: Change, even when for the better, can be scary for many people. Weighing the pros and cons makes a lot of sense when considering the benefits and consequences of innovating.

Brian, it’s been a pleasure speaking with you. Thank you for your time and insights.

Brian: I appreciate it and enjoyed the conversation. Thank you.

Photo Credit: vervocity via Compfight cc

The Rise Of Marketing And Transparency In Recruitment

As we dive into the new year, top of mind for a lot of us are questions of need and want. One of which is the need for marketing and transparency in recruitment.

And, if we could have anything we wanted in terms of HR Tech, what would it be? To better push employee engagement — with some kind of magical Big Brother-like metrics that ping us when employees start to lose interest? To finally relegate those creaky file cabinets in Storeroom B to things of the past, by allowing us agile and responsible access to the Cloud? What about big picture planning, endless processes and admin: can tech just do that so we don’t have to?

Depending on our role in the field, we may want all sorts of shiny toys. A colleague recently described HR as a big funnel, and the widest point is where I think we need HR tech to pay the most attention right now. We need all the tools we can get our hands on to attract the talent. Before a job at Company X is a gleam in anyone’s eye. Well before they are finally filling out the paperwork. And by the way, on paperwork, I’ve got my own dreams about how HR tech solves those 15-minute applications. I think we all do.

Let’s call this the ETF in HR: Edge of the Talent Funnel. Here’s my wish list:

Wider and smarter. As it was aptly pointed out and talked about, during our  #TChat at the HR Tech Conference, there are enormously compelling reasons to not treat potential candidates like people filling out applications, but like consumers. The rise of social and mobile, the shift in demographic cultures and the 24/7 constancy of brand identity and awareness means that we need to market and target talent. A company has to maintain and deepen its brand on all platforms; a workplace has to convey its own culture and make it appealing; and even the hiring process itself has to sell the potential consumer on its ease of use and benefits.

Stickier surface. There’s a lot of talent. According to the B.L.S., there were 5.0 million job hires on the last business day of July 2015. We need to be able to grab the attention of these possible hires far before they’re even considering being candidates. That means we need tech that can seize any and all opportunities to create an initial handshake and get them interested in your company.

User friendly both ways. User interface and experience are not just about talent, they’re also about the HR professionals who utilize them. In our quest to catch the eye of talent, we can’t overlook the need to also appeal to those doing, well, the eye-catching. In the trenches, the HR tech had better deliver without complicating things more, or all that fancy software won’t mean anything.

Unslick. There’s a nice trend towards using video and chats, with nice packages to convey employer identity and run onboarding, and neat ways to conduct interviews and supply FAQ-type info. But let’s not let that be a one-way screen dump, and let’s not forget to bring humans into the equation. No matter the power and scope of the tech we adopt, please let it be appropriately transparent. Real questions should be answered by a real person. A potential staffer in a given unit should be able to confer with top performers about what it’s like. Use video to close the distance without shutting out unscripted conversation. Transparency is authenticity, and tech has to build that into itself.

On an interesting point raised recently regarding the intersection between sales, marketing and HR, I want to add a note of caution. The goal of marketing is always to land a sale, and the goal of shaping a consumer experience via that sale is to always create a loyalty to that brand and product. One key difference: we are more than consumers when it comes to working. We are workers, working together. Ours is a long-term, constant gig. The kind of loyalty we need tech to enable is for more than a product, it’s got to be a commitment to deeply engage with time and energy in a company where we are willing to give our all. It’s a thick and thin loyalty, not a “gee that’s cool” loyalty.

If we don’t remember that, we’re not going to be able to maintain transparency, and we’re not going to be able to retain our best talent.

A version of this post was first published on Forbes on 10/16/15 

The Art of Marketing Marketing

Many companies devalue marketing, considering it the department that makes pretty pictures or the administrative support for the sales team.  Others strongly value the strategic involvement of marketing in product strategy, branding, strategic planning, and industry leadership.  I am blessed to work for an organization that models the latter, but I certainly am familiar with the former.

This topic is a big one (worthy of more than one post).  To get the conversation started, here are four key questions that you can ask yourself to help you answer the question of how to market marketing in your organization.

  1. 1. Can you express your motivation for wanting to market marketing in terms of overall business results?

Do you think that investing in a marketing automation system and nurturing campaigns will generate 20 percent more revenue next year?  Do you believe that improving the brand consistency across the organization will lead to higher customer perception of quality and improve gross margins by 2 percent for the next product launch?  Do you believe that developing a new interactive platform for sharing product benefits with your sales channel will reduce the sales cycle by two months resulting in a 13 percent increase in revenue with the same effort?  These are the types of questions you should be asking, when you are thinking of advocating for anything in a business environment.

If you don’t know how to answer these questions, it could be an indication that you are not yet ready to advocate for a larger and more impactful role for marketing in your company … and that you should get ready.  That in itself should be a call to action to learn more about your business, your drivers of value in the market, your customer problems, your solutions, and overall business strategy … and how score is kept financially.

  1. 2. What is the perception of your brand and that of “marketing” in your organization? What should it be?  What is the gap?

Before you would embark on a brand-building campaign, you would always begin with data to identify the “as is” state and to quantify the “to be” state.  And to identify the gap between these states.  Often this is accomplished with surveys, voice of the customer, share of voice analysis, or other tools.  Why not do the same thing within your organization to gauge how far away the organization is from what you envision as the ideal?

It is also important to know whether your brand is strong enough in the organization to lead that charge. What are you known for in the organization?  Why do people come to you?  Does that align with what you need it to be to advocate the change you are advocating?  What can you do to change the perception and reputation?

  1. 3. What “marketing” does your customer really need?

This should probably be the first question, as anything (besides that which is required for regulatory, legal, or financial compliance) that isn’t seen and appreciated by customers, probably isn’t worth doing.  It is the definition of waste and the hallmark of bureaucracy.  But coming back to my point, what value does the customer perceive in the marketing you do?

Are they able to make better and faster decisions because of their access to technical information?  Are your resellers able to sell more because of the sales tools you provide?  Are they able to reduce their costs with more accurate quoting resources?  Are they able to achieve business results because of the value proposition of the products you provide?

Some service firms have found that dedicated sales and marketing staff is not nearly as effective as sending their consultants right out to their clients to share expertise directly and wet their appetite for more (a topic covered extensively in Patrick Lencioni’s book Getting Naked).  Some technical engineering firms, website developers, or agencies find that their engineering teams are best equipped to sell and market to their technical buyers and that all that is needed from marketing is some communication tools to help facilitate these conversations. Each business will be different.

  1. 4. What is the winning formula that is worth repeating?

Like any system, it is important to look at inputs and outputs.  If you want to answer questions 1-3, a good place to start is your wins.  What are some situations that have gone well that you think are worthy of replication?  Go back and analyze a big order, a design win, or project award and ask everyone involved how it came to be, the touch points with the organization, what sales tools or marketing resources were used, and what made the difference.  There is no sense automating or “improving the efficiency” of things that are not effective.

Photo Credit: DRivers@WorldLaw via Compfight cc

Why Marketing to Your Boss and Co-Workers is Essential

Maybe you’ve fantasized about quitting, but you’re not ready to give up your steady paycheck, 401k, or insurance.

There is a quick alternative. Transform your current job into a job you love by engaging with its full potential, marshaling the resources around you, and seizing the opportunities that are there for the taking.

An essential step in transforming your job is learning to market to your boss and co-workers, as I suggest in “The Quit Alternative: The Blueprint for Creating the Job You Love…Without Quitting.”

Marketing is ultimately owning the effectiveness of your messages. Let me explain …

The Moment I Knew Marketing to My Boss and Co-Workers is ESSENTIAL

Ever considered why some messages you write or speak either:

  • resonate and compel others to action, or
  • create a misunderstanding or fall flat?

Marketing your messages also means taking responsibility for the outcome. It’s not what you say, it’s what people ultimately hear that often determines the success of your communication.

Here’s a personal example. We were in the final stage of a major contract and going all in as an organization. The contract meant either a flood of new growth or a major loss of business. I was on the negotiation team and desperate for seven of our company locations across the U.S. to confirm whether they could deliver on the customer’s demands.

We were in a crisis time crunch, so instead of telephoning I sent an email with this message in the subject line: “Please Respond ASAP.”

An hour passed. Only one location responded, probably because she was a friend of mine.

Everyone knew how important this was, and I couldn’t believe the delay. In my anger, I sent another message with this headline: “Your Job and Mine Could be at Stake.”

I received responses from all locations within minutes, and we confidently closed the deal.

In that moment, I understood the importance of owning my messaging.

Market to Your Boss, and Help Your Career

I struggled to write this article, because of my corporate roots. In organizational life, we don’t market to each other well. We rely on job titles, authority, and sheer goodwill to persuade others to act.

These tactics can get the job done in the short term, but over time they lose their effectiveness.

Escalating demands up the organization chart becomes a bit like the boy who cried wolf. Escalate too many times, and before long, people stop responding.

Far more advantageous and empowering is to direct your marketing toward the boss and co-workers. Developing this skill gains you more influence and the capacity for a much greater impact within the organization.

Own the Effectiveness of Your Messages

Joseph explained that no one listened to him at the office. He’s a leader in his field, and has been the resident expert for well over two decades. He’s dedicated and truly cares about his company.

He knows what should be done to make things better, but no one seems to listen.

For years, he’s been telling everyone how to fix things, but nothing’s happened, and in many cases, they’re heading in the wrong direction.

He’s frustrated, burned out, and ready to hit the eject button. He’d pretty much given up making any difference in his current position and was contemplating moving to another company, although without high expectations.

Although Joseph’s situation sounded bleak, we discovered something that worked for him. In place of the same old story of “I’m not being heard,” he shifted to “I’m not getting my message across.”

He began to think like a masterful marketer in how he framed the problems and solutions. This simple shift put him in control, and things began to change when he became the player, instead of the victim.

Imagine if everyone at the office began owning their own communication, and taking charge of who hears the message and how well it’s understood.

Things would change!

The next time you find yourself feeling frustrated at the office, ask yourself, “How can I more effectively get my message across?”

One Simple Marketing Question That Reduces Anxiety

When I get stuck on a project or anxious about a big talk, I go back to that simple question: “How can I more effectively get my message across?”

Just reflecting on it calms me, reminds me why I do this work, and propels me forward.

Answering this question takes your thoughts instantly away from your ego and back to your capacity to help others. It’s like standing on stage and shifting the spotlight back onto the crowd. You relax, and you’re able to compose a more effective message to reach the intended audience.

Action: Apply this question when planning the introduction to your next meeting. Write out the question, along with a few ideas in response, addressing how the meeting serves the attendees. Share these ideas with them when you kick things off. Notice how much the message you’ve crafted resonates. Note: If you can’t think of any ways that the meeting serves the audience, consider canceling it.

How to Market to Your Boss and Co-Workers to Get What You Want

To craft even more effective messages for the boss and co-workers, employ these three additional marketing strategies:

  • Meet them where they are. Consider the audience before writing an email, leading a call, or presenting, or your message may fall flat. How does your message address a problem they’re currently facing? This is critical, especially in creating an email subject line or presentation title. Otherwise, you’ll lose your reader and your audience before you begin.
  • Lead with WIFM. It’s incredibly helpful to assume that the audience is always wondering, “What’s in it for me?” (Tagged WIFM in marketing circles.) Instead of making them guess, offer the answer upfront to build engagement and interest, no later than the third sentence of any conference call or presentation. And include the answer in the reference line of all emails. You’ll probably notice an immediate difference in the responses you get. “Please Respond ASAP” had no WIFM. “Your Job and Mine Could be at Stake” put it out there directly and won a much quicker and complete response.
  • Prioritize the call to action. I read a lot of emails and sit through presentations and conference calls that do not present a clear next step or even ask people to do anything. For better results, begin your next email or meeting by asking yourself what you want people to do afterwards, and work backwards from there.

Pay For Your MBA with OPM

Sometimes packaging your message well means avoiding the need for negotiation altogether, even when you’re asking for something big. When I first thought about asking my company to pay for my MBA, I thought about it as a negotiation. Remarkably, the success I had was more about how I owned my message and identified it as a marketing opportunity.

My organization had never paid for anyone’s MBA before, and attending classes would limit my travel schedule. I was prepared to make significant concessions with my job and even my salary, but I never had to go there.

The end result was the organization agreed to pay most of the MBA costs and to support my taking time off to attend class and team projects. I continued to deliver results at work while I went to school. I had a great experience and even laid the groundwork for my co-workers to do the same.

Here’s how I applied these marketing strategies to get the results I wanted:

  • Meet them where they are. Before I made this request, I thought about it from my boss’s perspective. What would his concerns be? Who would he have to persuade? What experience did he have with this type of request? What would be most important to him? I knew their primary concern would be whether I could maintain my current workload and deliver a return on their investment in the MBA. I made sure to address those points when I presented the idea.
  • Lead with WIFM. I imagined that my boss was sitting there thinking “What’s in it for me,” so I led with WIFM, despite the temptation to start my presentation with how important it was to me to obtain an MBA. I led with the benefits for the boss and the organization, and I never mentioned how it would benefit my career (although they probably understood that). I did my research to understand the curriculum and talked to alumni of the program. It was easy then to link the MBA to enabling me to contribute more and make a bigger impact in my current role. I even pointed out school projects from the curriculum that I could complete in a dual capacity to deliver savings for our organization.
  • Prioritize the call to action. Although we reached a verbal agreement by the end of the meeting, the details were still fuzzy. I anticipated this result, so I drafted a letter of support in advance that only required a signature and to write in the amount they would contribute. At the end of the conversation, I made the call to action very simple: I pulled out the letter and asked my boss to sign. We hadn’t figured out all the logistics of making the payment, but I walked out of the office with an agreement in writing. I felt great, and he did too.

How to Test Marketing in Your Workday Right Now

You can try this idea in your workday right now and evaluate its effectiveness for yourself. Open your email and look at the last three emails you’ve sent.

Do these messages meet them where they are, lead with WIFM, and include a clear call to action? If not, consider resending and notice any difference in the responses.

This article is an excerpt adapted by Ben Fanning from his forthcoming book, “The Quit Alternative: The Blueprint for Creating the Job You Love….Without Quitting.”

Ben Fanning is Chief Engagement Officer at BenFanning.com, where he helps employees transform the job they have into the job they love. This article is an excerpt he has adapted from his forthcoming book, “The Quit Alternative: The Blueprint for Creating the Job You Love….Without Quitting.”

Photo Credit: Natalini Cristian via Compfight cc

What is Recruitment Marketing and How Your Business Can Use It

While recruitment and marketing may traditionally have been thought of as separate entities, they can actually work hand in glove. Recruitment marketing uses elements of both traditional recruitment strategies and brand marketing. The appeal that is created by powerful marketing can be harnessed by recruiters to develop job adverts that will attract candidates and potentially improve the quality of applicants to vacancies within a company.

Here are three ways you can mesh these two areas of expertise together in order to benefit your business:

Keywords That Attract Customers, Attract Job Searchers Too

Savvy companies who are competitive online know the value of SEO for their websites and target specific keywords in order to make conversions. Like customers, job hunters are also googling keywords when they’re searching for job vacancies. They’ll also use keywords for searches on job boards and networking sites like LinkedIn. You can extend the reach of your job ad by targeting specific keywords and phrases in the same way that marketers, advertisers and SEO and PPC specialists do to attract customers.

For example, if your company is looking to hire a new accounts manager, then you will want to look at the most frequently used keyword variations for this job role. This could include “accounts specialist,” “senior accounts manager,” “business account manager,” and so on. Using Google Keyword Planner and checking these against current job board adverts in your industry will help you to select the best keywords for your job ads.

Make An Impact, Do Something Different

There are adverts absolutely everywhere these days and marketing professionals know that in order to complete in a crowded marketplace they need to pull something special out of the bag to get people interested. There’s quite a bit of science behind this. You need to consider the messages that are being conveyed through imagery, colours, and the wording of job adverts. Avoid producing job ads that just replicate those of another company as job searchers are more likely to pass these by or not notice them at all.

Don’t Underestimate Brand Recognition, Utilize It

Your toaster has just broken and you’re shopping online to replace it. You already know what model you want so you type it into Google. You see ads for Amazon, a brand that you recognise, but also for an independent business that you’ve not heard of before. Which do you choose to buy from? The answer is nearly always the brand that you recognise because you already trust them, so it feels like the safer option.

With job hunting, the same situation applies. Job seekers are much more likely to be interested in jobs with companies who they know about, rather than companies that they’ve not heard of before. That’s where good branding and strong marketing presence comes in. Ideally, potential applicants will recognise your company from their branding and then notice the same branding on a job advert. If your company is smaller and lesser known, you want a candidate to be able to google the company and find links to well branded social media pages and articles featuring your company from reliable sources.

Online recruiting strategies can utilize company marketing, including branding as well as marketing strategies, to improve their job adverts and job descriptions, communicate the message they need, and attract the best candidates for your business.

Article by Ron Stewart, recruitment specialist and CEO of Jobs4Medical, a medical job board.

Photo Credit: Bigstock

Finding Value In Social

Social is the great ice breaker. It allows people to get introduced, forge relationships and to share experiences and information, of all types, with ease and speed. The world of social has changed immensely over the past 10 years. When I think back to my early forays into this medium, I’m astonished at how much it has grown; exploded is actually a better description.

Social Is What?

Initially, many people were unsure of how to use social, so it got a bad rap as a nonsensical waste of time. Updates about what someone was eating or watching on T.V. were not highly received, however over time, people learned and adjusted their POV to socially interact in more meaningful ways. It, also, became apparent that social could unlock the door to reaching greater masses of people in meaningful, business ways. This is when opportunities opened up to greater possibilities and social was allowed to assume its place among other media and communications platforms. In the scheme of things, social is still a relatively new medium and undergoing immense evaluation.

Newness aside, social is certainly a highly sought-after communications platform and without a doubt has eclipsed other media sources as the go-to source for a multitude of interactions. In my opinion, the only other two communications platforms that come close to social with a substantial share of audience capture are broadcast and mobile. Where social is concerned, it has done something which few other communications vehicles can boast; it has brought groups of people together in such a way as to unite them with like causes, beliefs, professions, and pursuits. And more to the point, social has given them a platform from which to interact in real-time.

Social As A Public Service

Never before have strangers been united and able to interact in such a familiar way. For example, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children uses Facebook, to issue Amber alerts. Prior to this, Amber alerts were broadcast in more traditional ways using television, radio and on highway signs. Comparatively, these communication vehicles pale by comparison to social. When given the time sensitivity of finding missing children, social has certainly stepped up to the task of disseminating urgent information.

Enter The Marketers

People much more creative than I have found ways to optimize social and turn it into the behemoth it has become. Marketers continue to find ways to manipulate it to their benefit, but its full potential has yet to be recognized. A few years from now, it would not surprise me to see it as a different and very grown-up communications source. The professionals who research it, study it, calculate its value in terms of money, and apply tools to uncover who in the population is paying attention to it, will find ways to help social develop into a more functional and well-rounded medium. Marketers have already found that social can be included as part of a successful integrated marketing solution, when coupled with other more traditional communications.

Social For Employment

Another way that social is being used successfully, is by recruiters and employer branding professionals who are seeking out potential new talent and promoting the employment benefits of their organizations. Given the number of people and job seekers (passive and active) using social, this makes a lot of sense and is a good way to promote jobs and branding. For job seekers, it’s a fine way to network and conduct company research. Social can reveal a lot about a company, and likewise, uncover information about job seekers that may go beyond work history.

It’s Not Perfect And Neither Are We

As with anything, common sense and discretion need to be used when interacting on social media. There is such a thing as TMI (too much information.) This can be an area where it can go wrong for people. In our desire to forge relationships and show the human side of ourselves, we can lose sight of what we say and how we say it.

We have all heard the stories of how someone lost a job because s/he bad mouthed the boss or revealed a proprietary company situation broadcast style on social. What these individuals lost sight of is that social is, well, social. This means that comments published on social becomes public knowledge for anyone to see, and this also includes, photo opps and selfies that reveal too much.

Likewise, social is a great vehicle for promoting products, events and recognitions, but no one wants to be barraged with information that is self-serving. Also using social in high-volume for the purposes of selling is tantamount to telemarketers calling during dinner.

So in closing, some of the nuggets we have learned about social to date are: use it with care and conscience, integrate social with other communications vehicles when it makes sense, be friendly and show your human side but don’t over share, be sensitive to how social is used for the greater good, use it as a resource in job searches and job updates, build relationships and share valuable content and last but not least, have fun and enjoy it for what it offers. And remember, social is the great ice breaker.

Growth From Within: 7 Ways to Compete on Employee Talent

Does your business compete primarily on product and price?

That kind of old-school strategy may win you customers in the near term. However, competing on price or product is really just a race to the bottom.

Along the way, you’ll miss the broader opportunity — the chance to win a sustainable position of market strength.

Rethinking Business Strategy

Competing on price and product is finite. Eventually, either or both will stop yielding the desired business results. Then what can an organization do to kick-start momentum? There are several choices: 1) Retire the product, and replace it with a new one, or 2) Develop a new pricing strategy.

Either option can breathe new life into sales, right? Sure, but only for a limited time. Price and product can be duplicated or replicated. But there’s a source of competitive advantage that is nearly impossible to duplicate or replicate — and that is your workforce.

The Human Element

Does your organization compete by tapping into your people’s infinite, unique potential — their talents, skills, knowledge, experience, energy and creativity?

Access to any of these is boundless. These inherent strengths can be directed toward developing the next great product your customers need, or that pricing strategy that paves the way to increased market share. For example, think of Southwest and its refusal to charge customers for flying with luggage. Southwest was expected to earn over $200 million from baggage fees. Instead, the airline earned over $1 billion by choosing not to charge.

In the 21st century, people are celebrated as the cause for success that catapults organizations to the top. So, what does an organization do to shift its focus to compete on employee talent? Here are seven people-centric ways that signal organizational commitment that puts people first.

1) Identify how employees set your company apart

Spend time understanding how your employees’ skills, experiences, strengths can help advance your strategy. Focus on how they differentiate you from competitors. You should be able to answer this question with confidence: “How does our work environment let our employees’ talents thrive and grow?”

2) Invest in true workforce development

Don’t just send employees to compliance training. Involve them in training that elevates their skills and knowledge. At its best, workforce development makes it possible for employees to learn on-the-job skills that are crucial for their growth, and helps them contribute more effectively to your organization’s goals.

3) Adopt a customer-centric strategy

Look to build and deepen relationship with customers by transforming products, services and the customer experience. Align your employees to create solutions in each of these three areas. This work is meaningful: it helps employees see how their work ties to the bigger picture. Plus employees want to “be in” on important work.

4) Align your reward mechanisms

Are your reward programs considered irrelevant or worse? Employees should be recognized in ways that are meaningful to them. Rewards must be appropriate and timely. It’s important to motivate people with a mix of regular quick-wins and long-term incentives.

5) Modernize how and where work gets done

Mobile technology and remote work policies can transform how and where your employees get work done. They want the responsibility and flexibility to choose. It’s time to begin trusting your employees to be accountable for when, where and how they contribute. Mobile is not going away.

6) Reevaluate workload

Is there a healthy tension between employee workload and time to get it done? If expectations don’t support optimal performance, then your environment is likely creating distress. Excessive stress leads to anxiety, as people begin to feel undervalued and question their well-being. That’s the start of a long downward slide to disengagement and attrition.

7) Invest in learning employees strengths

Strengths-based leadership is about understanding the kind of work that energizes employees and leads them to perform at their peak. Just as your business must adjust to external factors, it is essential to reshuffle employee responsibilities on an ongoing basis. The more time employees spend in the zone of peak performance, the more likely you’ll see creative contributions from their efforts — and the more meaning you’ll bring to your organization’s value proposition.

Today’s topsy-turvy marketplace sometimes scares executives into behaving like cash-hoarders. But organizations that compete on employee talent position themselves to outwit, outplay, and outlast their competition.

What ideas would you add to this list? Please add your comments.

(Editor’s Note: This post is republished from SwitchandShift, with permission)

(Also Note: To discuss World of Work topics like this with the TalentCulture community, join our online #TChat Events each Wednesday, from 6:30-8pm ET. Everyone is welcome at events, or join our ongoing Twitter and G+ conversation anytime. Learn more…)

Image Credit: Pixabay

Social Influence and Your Brand: Connecting the Dots [Webinar]

“Don’t try to invent a tribe. Show up to lead one that exists.”
Seth Godin

Today’s hyper-connected digital world has opened the door to a whole new era in brand development.

Employers, HR professionals and job hunters, alike, are rapidly embracing digital channels to elevate their market presence and amplify their share of voice.

With proactive players setting a torrid pace, no one can afford to stay on the social media sidelines. But social networking doesn’t guarantee influence — and activity without strategy can put a brand at risk.

Join the Experts

So how do you create a digital brand roadmap that makes the most sense for your goals? What’s the best way to ignite your social agenda? And how do you measure its impact?

If you’re looking for expert guidance, you won’t want to miss this very special webinar event:

“Using Social Insights to Build Your Brand”
February 27, at 2pm Eastern Time / 11am Pacific Time.

LeadTail webinar CTATalentCulture founder, Meghan M. Biro will join forces with the social marketing and insights specialists at Leadtail to talk about how top HR and recruiting influencers are driving market awareness and engagement through social channels.

You’ll learn how social media best practices can move your brand forward and how data-based insights can inform your strategy.

For example, the session will focus on questions like these:

What elements define a personal brand?
Why are social channels ideal for brand building?
Who influences the HR and recruiting community today — and how?
How can you successfully apply these social techniques?

In addition, Meghan will reveal how she has leveraged social media to become one of the most recognized experts in the HR and recruiting space.

“Social channels have created a phenomenal opportunity to reach, engage and influence all the constituents a brand must touch — business allies, customers, prospects and employees,” Meghan says. “I’m excited to team-up with Leadtail, as we empower brands to expand their connections and strengthen their business relationships.”

Throughout the webinar, attendees are invited to join members of the TalentCulture community on Twitter, as we share ideas and questions using the #TChat hashtag.

Don’t miss this dynamic informative event! Register now, and join us February 27th.

Participating Organizations

Learn more about Leadtail, and connect with @Leadtail on Twitter.
Learn more about TalentCulture, and connect with @TalentCulture on Twitter.

Register now for this webinar: Using Social Insights to Build Your Brand.

Image Credit: Pixabay

Community: A Brand’s Most Powerful Friend

Perhaps nothing drives a brand forward more than its community.

An estimated 55% of consumers are willing to recommend companies that deliver great experiences, and 85% are willing to pay a premium for great services. But who are the “people” making those recommendations and purchasing decisions?

They’re members of your community, right?

I’m certain that if I asked every CMO and marketing leader I know to describe their brand community, I would get a different answer from each. “Community” is a subjective concept, with wide varying definitions.

Community-Influencing-Buyer-BehaviorThere are also wide variations in how brands are seen, heard and felt by their respective communities. How deeply does a community feel connected to a brand?

For instance, think about Apple and its community. Apple gets attention because its brand recognition is extraordinary. But have you considered the powerful impact that Apple’s community has had on the success of the brand?

To demonstrate my point, think of the last conversation you’ve had with an “Apple fan” about the company, its products or its competitors. What did that conversation sound like?

If your experience is anything like mine, the conversation was probably wonderful, as long as you agreed about how wonderful Apple and its products are. However, if you dared to question the quality of Apple’s products, ideas or ability to innovate, you no doubt soon realized that you had crossed into enemy territory.

Those kind of conversations are a lot like telling your child that Santa isn’t real — only worse. But it speaks highly of the Apple community.

What is the catalyst for Apple’s insanely powerful connection with its community?

By-in-large, Apple doesn’t behave like a “nouveau” social company, so they’re not building their brand army through Facebook and Twitter. But it has brought together a passionate, global community by creating a sense of “belonging” that customers feel deeply when they use Apple products.

The iconic Apple slogan, “Think Different” epitomizes its cult-like following. On any given day at Starbucks around the world, people who want to be seen as broad-minded, creative thinkers are often found hovering over a Macbook — almost as if the presence of an Apple product is synonymous with their identity.

For Apple, this works. Through a customer experience focused on the idea that being different and innovative is “cool,” Apple has built one of the tightest brand communities on and off the web. But of course, Apple is a huge, established company, with a massive budget for community development. It leads me to wonder — how can other brands, smaller brands, newer brands tap into the power of community?

Not Just Community — A Close Community

Think about the neighborhood where you grew up. What was it like? Was it urban or rural? Were there many houses or just a few? Did you know your neighbors, or were they merely passing strangers?

Regardless of their shape, size and geography, most neighborhoods provide some sense of community. However, all neighborhoods aren’t the same. In my hometown, there was a “Community Center” — a place where folks from the neighborhood would congregate, connect and discuss issues affecting the area.

In that kind of environment, as citizens drew closer, the more they worked together to get things done — for example installing a stop sign where kids played in the street, and passing a referendum to build a new school. Over the years, as traditional urban settings gave way to modern models, subdivisions often created a community “on purpose,” with a Neighborhood Watch, a Board of Directors, and sometimes even a pool and recreation center.

This intentional approach to community brings stakeholders closer, by making neighborhood issues and events more visible, and helping community participants see the impact of their involvement.

Building a Brand Community Like a Neighborhood

When you boil it down to its simplest form, a community is the sum total of your brand stakeholders. I say stakeholder (rather than customer) because many people can participate in a brand community, beyond those who purchase a company’s products and services.

First, there are obvious extensions, such as employees and friends. Also, there are less obvious community players, such as those who are interested in learning more about your products and services, but may not have an immediate need to buy.

Let’s use automobiles as an example.

In 1995, when I was 14, my favorite car in the whole world was the new Pontiac Grand Prix. It had just been redesigned as a “wide track” model, and as a 14 year old, I thought it was one bad machine. However, at 14, I wasn’t legally or financially able to buy a car.

Four years later, I had scraped together all the loose change from under the sofa cushions, and I was ready to buy a car. Guess what I bought? The Grand Prix! That’s because I had emotionally tied myself to the brand, the car, and the community. When I was ready to purchase, it wasn’t even a question who would earn my business.

While my story is just one example, this type of brand loyalty exists with everything from the food we eat to the blue jeans we wear, and beyond. When people become a part of something, their purchasing sentiment changes. And guess what? So does the way they evangelize for your product. You think someone that likes your product is a good ambassador. Just think of someone who recently bought your product and likes it! That is another great frontier for brand building.

Which takes us back to building a close-knit community. It requires a setting for cultivation and nurturing. Much like a neighborhood — only different — to suit the needs of the brand and its community.

Community in the Connected World

If you think about the neighborhood example, you’ll likely think that a good community is small, tight knit, and somewhat directionally aligned.

But in the new world — the connected world where we manage communities on our blog, Facebook, Twitter and what seems like a million other places — the idea of community can become overwhelming. That’s because the “massiveness” of the online sphere is hard for many marketers to imagine in meaningful terms.

This can lead marketers to make some key community-building mistakes:

1) They aim too large: Mere numbers (pageviews, visits, likes, followers) aren’t relationships;
2) They don’t engage: Communicating with a “faceless” digital community can seem like a daunting task;
3) They miss out: Online communities are a powerful way to build influential brand advocates, but sometimes inaction takes over when brands don’t know where to start.When-Communities-Fail-

While these mistakes are typical, they can be avoided with a few common-sense tactics:

1) Aim for relevance: Rather than shooting for a large community, start by aiming for those that are most likely to buy your product/service now or in the near future. Also, with online networks (especially social networks), research where your target audience invests its time, and go there first!

2) Engage more than you promote: Share your stories, ideas and information, but make sure you allow the community to become part of the conversation. Ask more questions. Build more testimonials and case studies. Invite participation.

3) Start: Even if your “start” is small, don’t miss the opportunity to build a community by putting your head in the sand.Making-Communities-Succeed

Remember: Building A Community Can Take Time

Apple has an amazing community of insanely loyal brand advocates. It also nearly crashed and burned on multiple occasions, and was saved by innovation that focused on consumption of music on a tiny MP3 player. For other companies, community takes time and work to build.

This starts at the core — building products and services that your customers can love. It also may include places for customers to congregate and talk about how they put your products to use.

On the flip side, community building also requires brands to acknowledge shortcomings and respond transparently when things go poorly. Think about what Target and Snap Chat will need to invest in rebuilding brand confidence after recent security breaches. Neither of these incidents was intentional, but trust was lost, and recovery will take time and monumental effort.

However, there is a certain beauty in community. When you build it, nurture it and engage with it, your community will tend to stand by your brand in good times and in bad. While never perfect — like your family, your neighborhood or your city — your brand community is one of the most powerful tools in the connected world.

Whatever you do, don’t ignore or underestimate the power of your community!

(Editor’s Note: Republished from Millennial CEO, with permission, this is an excerpt from “The New Rules of Customer Engagement,” a new ebook by Dan Newman, available Spring 2014. )

(Also Note: To discuss World of Work topics like this with the TalentCulture community, join our online #TChat Events each Wednesday, from 6:30-8pm ET. Everyone is welcome at events, or join our ongoing Twitter conversation anytime. Learn more…)

Image Credit: Texas A&M

Community: A Brand's Most Powerful Friend

Perhaps nothing drives a brand forward more than its community.

An estimated 55% of consumers are willing to recommend companies that deliver great experiences, and 85% are willing to pay a premium for great services. But who are the “people” making those recommendations and purchasing decisions?

They’re members of your community, right?

I’m certain that if I asked every CMO and marketing leader I know to describe their brand community, I would get a different answer from each. “Community” is a subjective concept, with wide varying definitions.

Community-Influencing-Buyer-BehaviorThere are also wide variations in how brands are seen, heard and felt by their respective communities. How deeply does a community feel connected to a brand?

For instance, think about Apple and its community. Apple gets attention because its brand recognition is extraordinary. But have you considered the powerful impact that Apple’s community has had on the success of the brand?

To demonstrate my point, think of the last conversation you’ve had with an “Apple fan” about the company, its products or its competitors. What did that conversation sound like?

If your experience is anything like mine, the conversation was probably wonderful, as long as you agreed about how wonderful Apple and its products are. However, if you dared to question the quality of Apple’s products, ideas or ability to innovate, you no doubt soon realized that you had crossed into enemy territory.

Those kind of conversations are a lot like telling your child that Santa isn’t real — only worse. But it speaks highly of the Apple community.

What is the catalyst for Apple’s insanely powerful connection with its community?

By-in-large, Apple doesn’t behave like a “nouveau” social company, so they’re not building their brand army through Facebook and Twitter. But it has brought together a passionate, global community by creating a sense of “belonging” that customers feel deeply when they use Apple products.

The iconic Apple slogan, “Think Different” epitomizes its cult-like following. On any given day at Starbucks around the world, people who want to be seen as broad-minded, creative thinkers are often found hovering over a Macbook — almost as if the presence of an Apple product is synonymous with their identity.

For Apple, this works. Through a customer experience focused on the idea that being different and innovative is “cool,” Apple has built one of the tightest brand communities on and off the web. But of course, Apple is a huge, established company, with a massive budget for community development. It leads me to wonder — how can other brands, smaller brands, newer brands tap into the power of community?

Not Just Community — A Close Community

Think about the neighborhood where you grew up. What was it like? Was it urban or rural? Were there many houses or just a few? Did you know your neighbors, or were they merely passing strangers?

Regardless of their shape, size and geography, most neighborhoods provide some sense of community. However, all neighborhoods aren’t the same. In my hometown, there was a “Community Center” — a place where folks from the neighborhood would congregate, connect and discuss issues affecting the area.

In that kind of environment, as citizens drew closer, the more they worked together to get things done — for example installing a stop sign where kids played in the street, and passing a referendum to build a new school. Over the years, as traditional urban settings gave way to modern models, subdivisions often created a community “on purpose,” with a Neighborhood Watch, a Board of Directors, and sometimes even a pool and recreation center.

This intentional approach to community brings stakeholders closer, by making neighborhood issues and events more visible, and helping community participants see the impact of their involvement.

Building a Brand Community Like a Neighborhood

When you boil it down to its simplest form, a community is the sum total of your brand stakeholders. I say stakeholder (rather than customer) because many people can participate in a brand community, beyond those who purchase a company’s products and services.

First, there are obvious extensions, such as employees and friends. Also, there are less obvious community players, such as those who are interested in learning more about your products and services, but may not have an immediate need to buy.

Let’s use automobiles as an example.

In 1995, when I was 14, my favorite car in the whole world was the new Pontiac Grand Prix. It had just been redesigned as a “wide track” model, and as a 14 year old, I thought it was one bad machine. However, at 14, I wasn’t legally or financially able to buy a car.

Four years later, I had scraped together all the loose change from under the sofa cushions, and I was ready to buy a car. Guess what I bought? The Grand Prix! That’s because I had emotionally tied myself to the brand, the car, and the community. When I was ready to purchase, it wasn’t even a question who would earn my business.

While my story is just one example, this type of brand loyalty exists with everything from the food we eat to the blue jeans we wear, and beyond. When people become a part of something, their purchasing sentiment changes. And guess what? So does the way they evangelize for your product. You think someone that likes your product is a good ambassador. Just think of someone who recently bought your product and likes it! That is another great frontier for brand building.

Which takes us back to building a close-knit community. It requires a setting for cultivation and nurturing. Much like a neighborhood — only different — to suit the needs of the brand and its community.

Community in the Connected World

If you think about the neighborhood example, you’ll likely think that a good community is small, tight knit, and somewhat directionally aligned.

But in the new world — the connected world where we manage communities on our blog, Facebook, Twitter and what seems like a million other places — the idea of community can become overwhelming. That’s because the “massiveness” of the online sphere is hard for many marketers to imagine in meaningful terms.

This can lead marketers to make some key community-building mistakes:

1) They aim too large: Mere numbers (pageviews, visits, likes, followers) aren’t relationships;
2) They don’t engage: Communicating with a “faceless” digital community can seem like a daunting task;
3) They miss out: Online communities are a powerful way to build influential brand advocates, but sometimes inaction takes over when brands don’t know where to start.When-Communities-Fail-

While these mistakes are typical, they can be avoided with a few common-sense tactics:

1) Aim for relevance: Rather than shooting for a large community, start by aiming for those that are most likely to buy your product/service now or in the near future. Also, with online networks (especially social networks), research where your target audience invests its time, and go there first!

2) Engage more than you promote: Share your stories, ideas and information, but make sure you allow the community to become part of the conversation. Ask more questions. Build more testimonials and case studies. Invite participation.

3) Start: Even if your “start” is small, don’t miss the opportunity to build a community by putting your head in the sand.Making-Communities-Succeed

Remember: Building A Community Can Take Time

Apple has an amazing community of insanely loyal brand advocates. It also nearly crashed and burned on multiple occasions, and was saved by innovation that focused on consumption of music on a tiny MP3 player. For other companies, community takes time and work to build.

This starts at the core — building products and services that your customers can love. It also may include places for customers to congregate and talk about how they put your products to use.

On the flip side, community building also requires brands to acknowledge shortcomings and respond transparently when things go poorly. Think about what Target and Snap Chat will need to invest in rebuilding brand confidence after recent security breaches. Neither of these incidents was intentional, but trust was lost, and recovery will take time and monumental effort.

However, there is a certain beauty in community. When you build it, nurture it and engage with it, your community will tend to stand by your brand in good times and in bad. While never perfect — like your family, your neighborhood or your city — your brand community is one of the most powerful tools in the connected world.

Whatever you do, don’t ignore or underestimate the power of your community!

(Editor’s Note: Republished from Millennial CEO, with permission, this is an excerpt from “The New Rules of Customer Engagement,” a new ebook by Dan Newman, available Spring 2014. )

(Also Note: To discuss World of Work topics like this with the TalentCulture community, join our online #TChat Events each Wednesday, from 6:30-8pm ET. Everyone is welcome at events, or join our ongoing Twitter conversation anytime. Learn more…)

Image Credit: Texas A&M

Can You Hear Me Now? Influence Goes Social #TChat Recap

“The greatest ability in business is to get along with others and influence their actions.”
–John Hancock

Wherever you find people, you’ll find influence. The concept is as basic as civilization, itself.

John Hancock understood its importance in business contexts. But as business moves to the digital space, the way we gain, use and respond to influence is shifting into overdrive. How does this digitally-enhanced version of influence affect the way we engage and motivate others across organizations and in the world at-large? And why should it matter to everyone in today’s workplace? These questions were top-of-mind this week at #TChat Events, as the TalentCulture community welcomed two influence experts:

Mark Fidelman, author of the book, Socialized!, and CEO of RaynForest, an influencer marketplace;
Mark Willaman, Founder and President of Fisher Vista LLC, owners of HRmarketer software and Fisher Vista marketing services

(Editor’s Note: See #TChat Twitter slideshow and resource links at the end of this post.)

Defining Social Influence

What is a “social influencer” anyway? If a static persona accumulates social media followers, is that enough? Or is it about behavior that attract the attention and interest of professional peers? Is it when your presence (or absence) affects the nature and flow of conversations on social channels? Or is it when you write blog posts that draw an extraordinary number of readers and comments?

Of course, it can involve all of these elements and more. Effective influencers use social tools as a means to an end. It’s not just about building an audience. It’s about engaging and interacting with people in ways that leave them enthused, passionate, and eager to tell others about that experience. As word spreads about influencers, word also spreads about their company, product or service.

Social Influence In Action

Take a look at some of today’s most prominent business influencers — people like Richard Branson and Arianna Huffington. They really put the “social” in social media. Unlike “image-first” personalities like the Gagas and Biebers of the world — social influencers invest in real community connections and conversations.

It’s smart to focus first on quality rather than quantity. (What would you prefer — 100 engaged industry peers, or 100,000 random followers, who may not even care about you or what you represent? Where can you add value, and get value in return? I would pick 100 targeted connections with whom I can have purposeful interactions. If those interactions create a gravitational pull that expands my sphere of influence, then I’ve done something right. As someone mentioned last night at #TChat — don’t be mislead into thinking that it’s a quick process.

Why Should We Care?

I think of social influencers as “go-to” resources. When I want advice or inspiration, I turn to my network. These are trusted professionals, and use their influence for broader purposes than self-promotion. They build relationships based on integrity, transparency, vulnerability and humor — all the best traits we look for in humans. No doubt that’s why TalentCulture CEO, Meghan Biro, encourages everyone to “live your brand.” It’s the most unique, powerful asset any of us can offer.

Social media is an extraordinary tool that helps us establish immediate connections with business leaders, employees, customers, stakeholders and others. It can provide companies with valuable insight about market perceptions. It can be a powerful force that shapes business brands, cultures and communities — if organization are willing to show up, listen and participate. This is where leaders can make a difference. Committing to an active social presence is the first step toward empowering employees and customers as brand ambassadors. There’s nothing to lose, and everything to gain.

#TChat Week-In-Review: Social Influence as a Competitive Advantage

Publication1

See the videos in the Preview Post now…

SAT 11/2:

#TChat Preview:
TalentCulture Community Manager Tim McDonald framed this week’s topic in a post that featured brief “sneak peek” hangout videos with our guests. Read the Preview: “The Rise of Influence in Social Business.

SUN 11/3:

Forbes.com Post: TalentCulture CEO, Meghan M. Biro suggested why and how modern leaders should invest in a social media presence. Read: “7 Traits of Highly Influential Leaders.

TUE 11/5:

Related Post: Guest blogger Paul Bailey helped us look at influence from the outside-in, with advice for job seekers on using social media intelligence to get hired. Read: “How Social Sleuthing Can Land You A Dream Job.

WED 11/6:

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Listen to the #TChat Radio show now

#TChat Radio: Our hosts, Meghan M. Biro and Kevin W. Grossman spoke with guests Mark Willaman and Mark Fidelman how social media is transforming the concept of influence in today’s world of work. Fascinating stuff! Listen to the radio recording now!

#TChat Twitter: Immediately following the radio show, Meghan, Kevin and guests joined the entire TalentCulture ommunity on the #TChat Twitter stream for an open conversation focused on 5 key questions. For highlights, check the Storify slideshow below:

#TChat Insights: Competitive Advantage of Social Influence

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Closing Notes & What’s Ahead

GRATITUDE: Thanks again to Mark Willaman and Mark Fidelman for sharing your insights on the evolving meaning and importance of influence in the social era. Your knowledge and experience are invaluable to our community.

NOTE TO BLOGGERS: Did this week’s events prompt you to write about influence-related issues or opportunities? We welcome your thoughts. Post a link on Twitter (include #TChat or @TalentCulture), or insert a comment below, and we’ll pass it along.

WHAT’S AHEAD: Next week, we take a closer look at how the social/mobile/cloud revolution is redefining the entire hiring process. So save the date (November 13) for another powerful #TChat double-header!

Meanwhile, the World of Work conversation continues. So join us on the #TChat Twitter stream, on our LinkedIn discussion group. or elsewhere on social media. The lights are always on here at TalentCulture, and we look forward to hearing from you.

See you on the stream!

Image Credit: Stock.xchng

The Rise of Influence in Social Business #TChat Preview

(Editor’s Note: Are you looking for full highlights and resource links from this week’s events? Read the #TChat Recap: “Can You Hear Me Now? Influence Goes Social.”)

Think for a moment about the brands that have the deepest impact on your professional life.

What companies and people do you look to for credible information, relevant insights and valuable connections? And which ones would you include on your “who’s who” list?

More importantly, how would you develop that list?

Influence Isn’t What It Used To Be. Or Is It?

In less than a decade we’ve seen a dramatic shift in the logic and tools we use to create and shape our professional circles. “Influence” is no longer limited to an elite and somewhat static class of highly prominent organizations and individuals. Today, social channels make it possible for anyone to claim a corner of the marketplace, earn a share of voice, and develop a loyal following.

So, what do these new social dynamics mean for the future of employer and employee brands? And how can we all do a better job in leveraging the “currency” of influence? That’s what we’ll explore this week at #TChat Events, with two experts in the art and science of influence:

•  Mark Fidelman, CEO of RaynForest, an influence marketing platform
•  Mark Willaman, Founder and President of Fisher Vista LLC, owners of HRmarketer software and Fisher Vista marketing services

To frame this topic, I spoke briefly with both guests in separate G+ hangouts. First, Mark Willaman discussed the “what” and “why” of influence:

Then Mark Fidelman offered a quick take on how influence is measured:

What are your thoughts about the role of influence in today’s world of work? Join us this week to share your ideas and opinions!

#TChat Events: Social Influence as a Competitive Advantage

#TChat Radio — Wed, Nov 6 — 6:30pmET / 3:30pmPT

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Tune-in to the #TChat Radio show

Our hosts, Meghan M. Biro and Kevin W. Grossman talk with Mark Willaman and Mark Fidelman about the role of influence in today’s social world of work. Tune-in LIVE online this Wednesday afternoon!

#TChat Twitter — Wed, Nov 6 7pmET / 4pmPT

Immediately following the radio show, we’ll move this discussion to the #TChat Twitter stream, where Cyndy Trivella will moderate an open chat with the entire TalentCulture community. Everyone with a Twitter account is invited to participate, as we address these questions:

Q1: How can “industry influence” impact the world of work?
Q2: In what ways does social listening shape culture, marketing and branding?
Q3: Why would brand influencers make better employees? (or not?)
Q4: How do leaders know who is an influencer, and how does this impact culture?
Q5: What social tools do you use for brand marketing and talent recruiting?

Throughout the week, we’ll keep the discussion going on the #TChat Twitter feed and on our LinkedIn Discussion Group. So please join us share your questions, ideas and opinions.
We’ll see you on the stream!

HR and Marketing: Smashing Silos #TChat Recap

In this do-more-with-less era, it’s almost counterintuitive to think that “silo” mentality still defines some organizations. We’ve all seen it — different departments don’t know why or how they should rely on each other, and business suffers from a lack of collaboration.

Of course, I do know some companies where communication is strong. People forge cross-functional relationships, and they use influence to drive progress. But unfortunately, that’s not the norm. More often, departments work in isolation — struggling to understand business problems, confused about how to solve them, and uncertain how to move to the next level. Cultures like this lag far behind collaborative competitors.

Bridging the Gap

Where is this challenge most prevalent? Let’s start in our backyard, with human resources and marketing. As the TalentCulture community discussed this week at #TChat events, these two disciplines share much common ground, but tend not to realize it. Why? Let’s dig deeper.

According to the American Marketing Association, “Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings.” How does that apply to recruiting — a critical HR responsibility?

When a company seeks candidates for an open position, it relies upon a process that helps recruiters translate the need into a workable activity. For example, the process may start with a job description, created with requirements and other information obtained from the hiring manager. The description is transformed into a job posting and communicated externally in multiple forms. Various channels deliver the message to appropriate audiences as an offer that says essentially, “Here’s the kind of talent we seek. In exchange for your ability and commitment to perform the job to our expectations, we will compensate you with X, Y and Z.”

This tactic is pure marketing. It rings true with the classic “5 Ps” of the marketing mix — as well as the more recent inside-out version:

People – Potential employees
Product – Job opportunity
Price – Associated cost to recruit, fill, hire and retain
Promotion – Advertising and word-of-mouth about the job opening
Place – Organizational culture, which extends to talent communities that share job information

At the intersection of recruiting and marketing, many tactics and fundamentals go hand-in-hand, creating opportunities to exchange knowledge and hone skills. But more importantly, at the center of this common worldview is the employment brand — a powerful organizational asset. This is the foundation upon which an employment value proposition flourishes. The proof points are bits of raw workforce and candidate experience data we should analyze within the context of a strategic recruitment plan. Ultimately, that recruitment plan should not only inform corporate brand strategy, but also be shaped by it.

Two Sides Of The Same Coin

Like two sides of a coin, recruiting and marketing practitioners must work in concert to be truly effective. As people listen, learn, empathize and sharpen their communications, the opportunity to understand and leverage interdepartmental strengths will expand. When teams work in concert to unify brand positioning, measurably improved outcomes can’t be far behind.

Thanks to everyone who shared ideas and opinions about this topic at #TChat events this week. We invite you to review the related resources below, and continue this conversation here and on social channels. Hopefully, we can be an example of effective professional collaboration!

#TChat Week-In-Review: Recruiting IS Marketing?

SUN 9/1:

ChrisFields

Watch the Hangout with Chris Fields

#TChat Preview: TalentCulture Community Manager Tim McDonald provided a “sneak peek” of this week’s topic, featuring a brief Hangout discussion with one of our special guests, Chris Fields. Read the Preview: Recruiting and Marketing: Blurred Lines?

MON 9/2:

Forbes.com Post: TalentCulture CEO, Meghan M. Biro explained why and how business leaders should view recruitment as a strategic marketing initiative. Read: “5 Recruiting Habits of Successful Leaders.”

TUE 9/3:

Related Post: Guest blogger, David Smooke defined 3 keys to “Hiring Culture” as the basis for strategic recruiting initiatives. Read: “Hiring Culture: Creating A Recruitment Ecosystem.”

WED 9/4:

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Listen to the #TChat Radio show

#TChat Radio: As a prelude to our open Twitter chat, Meghan M. Biro and Kevin W. Grossman, talked with two recruiting experts about why and how HR organizations can leverage marketing expertise to enhance recruitment. Our special guests were:

David Bernstein, VP of the “Big Data for HR” Division at eQuest, and
Chris Fields, independent HR consultant, resume development specialist and HR writer.

Listen now to the radio show recording.

#TChat Twitter: Immediately following the radio show, I moderated an open discussion with Chris, Meghan, Kevin and our entire community on the #TChat Twitter stream. For highlights from the conversation, watch the Storify slideshow below:

#TChat Highlights: Recruiting IS Marketing

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Closing Notes & What’s Ahead

GRATITUDE: Thanks again to guests David Bernstein and Chris Fields, for offering your perspectives on recruiting and marketing this week. Your expertise and insights are invaluable to our community.

NOTE TO BLOGGERS: Did this week’s events prompt you to write about related issues? We’d love to share your thoughts. Post a link on Twitter (include #TChat or @TalentCulture), or insert a comment below, and we’ll pass it along.

WHAT’S AHEAD: Next week on 9/11, we take a serious look at an important subject, “Workplace Violence and Prevention.” This promises to be a helpful and informative session. So plan to join us, and check for more details in coming days here and on TalentCulture channels.

In the meantime, the World of Work conversation continues! So join us on the #TChat Twitter stream, on our LinkedIn discussion group. or elsewhere on social media. The lights are always on here at TalentCulture, and your ideas and opinions are always welcome.

See you on the stream!

Image Credit: Stock.xchng

Hiring Culture: Creating A Recruitment Ecosystem

Written by David Smooke

Every organization has its own unique “hiring culture,” in addition to its core company culture. Hiring culture deserves just as much attention as company culture, because the two are deeply intertwined. The way an employer acquires talent determines not only who works at the company, but also the very essence of how those people function.

Culture: A Reality Check

Before we look at ways to elevate your hiring culture, let’s first look at how esteemed cross-cultural researcher Geert Hofstede defines culture:

“Culture is the collective programming of the human mind that distinguishes the members of one human group from those of another. Culture in this sense is a system of collectively held values.”

By extension, a strong definition of company culture emerges: “the collective programming of the human mind that distinguishes the members of one company from another.”

So, what attracts people to a particular company (and culture)? And what motivates them to move from one culture to another? Early interactions with a new company bring us face-to-face with that organization’s hiring culture. It’s essential to make those initial experiences as approachable and authentic as possible. How?

Elevate Your Hiring Culture — Focus On 3 Key Factors

1) Alignment With Company Culture

Hiring culture feeds off of company culture, and company culture feeds off of hiring culture. However, your company culture has more inertia. In other words, every day, a mass of employees brings your company culture to life. Each employee is essentially a walking, talking, full-fledged marketing campaign, demonstrating what it means to work at your company. Do those employees know what your business stands for?

Companies such as TOMS and Google are models of how to “own” a company mission that focuses on social good. TOMS employees speak proudly about how every shoe purchase leads to a free pair of shoes for someone in need. This positivity carries over to its culture. Google employees popularized the slogan, “Don’t Be Evil,” as a way of pledging not to abuse the company’s abundance of information.

Every employee at your organization should know what your corporate slogan means, and feel comfortable sharing that concept with others. For example, I’m proud to say that my company stands for Zero Unemployment.

2) Transparent Employer Branding

Adding transparency to your employer branding gives potential hires a better idea of the impact your company is trying to make on the world, and a more accurate impression what it’s like to spend a day in your environment. You want to attract people that want to be there. Therefore, you have nothing to lose by being bold and straightforward. For example, Zappos offers employees $2,000 to quit because, as they say, “We really want everyone to be here because they want to be, and because they believe in the culture.”

To increase the transparency of your employer brand, and attract people who will be passionate about your company, try these tactics:

•  Share authentic pictures of what it is like to work at your company (real pictures of real employees on the job)
•  Counsel employees on why and how they should talk about your company and share your brand message, and;
•  Be awesome. This cannot be faked. When a company’s mission, vision and values are worthy, it shows.

3) Streamlined Hiring Communications

Finally, take a careful look at your hiring process. Where do you see disconnects in communication? How do they affect the speed and quality of talent acquisition? Consider a more collaborative model. For example, with a team of 3 to 4 people (rather than only 1 or 2), the hiring manager draws on more perspectives for a well-informed hiring decision, and you can get your team more invested in each new hire.

No matter how you structure hiring teams, it’s essential to have a system in place that facilitates information exchange across all levels. Hiring managers must have a way to define and update the information they want from interviewers; interviewers need a simple way to capture and share their impression of candidates, and stakeholders need an easy way to review and exchange input, so they can make timely, effective hiring decisions.

Better Hiring Culture = A Better Business

According to HubSpot CEO, Brian Halligan, “If you’ve got a great product, it pulls in customers; if you’ve got a great culture, it pulls in employees.”

But here’s the rub: You can’t have a consistently great product without consistently great employees. And you can’t have great employees without a clear, coherent, compelling hiring culture. Hiring culture determines who you’ll attract as employees. Those choices will shape your company culture, and inevitably, your bottom-line.

Is your hiring culture attracting, closing and retaining the best talent for your company? What do you think it takes to develop and improve a hiring culture? Share your ideas in the comments area.

headshot(Author Profile: David Smooke is Director of Social Media at SmartRecruiters, the hiring platform. In addition to overseeing SmartRecruiters’ online communities, David is the Editor-in-Chief of the SmartRecruiting Blog and co-organizer of monthly Smartup events. He believes remarkable content determines the usage of every news feed.

David lives in San Francisco and enjoys walking the city, reading Dostoyevski, playing basketball, and discussions of the internet’s potential growth. Connect with David on Twitter at @DavidSmooke, and on LinkedIn at Linkedin.com/ClarkKent.)

Feature image credit: alborzshawn via Flickr

If It Ain't Broke…Well, Maybe it IS Broke: #TChat Recap:

“Any change, even a change for the better, is always accompanied by drawbacks and discomforts.” — Arnold Bennett

Not really what we want to hear when we don’t think anything’s broken. Leadership is one key to driving innovation “buy in”. It’s critical for us to stay close to the rapid developments happening in the social marketplace.

Take marketing for example. You’re in business selling magical whizzie-whigs and you need to generate visibility and leads in order to sell them. And that’s what you do — brand marketing, content marketing, direct marketing, media buying, public relations, social media marketing — a complete integrated marketing strategy.

Those new leads that are generated are then passed over to sales to follow up on and eventually close. Some of them at least. Those in the lead pipeline may be nurtured and marketed to so as to inch them along to close.

Then what? Those that do close become customers and are handed over to account management and customer service folk and then —

A year later when it’s time to upgrade their magical whizzie-whigs, a percentage say thanks but no thanks. “Just wasn’t the right product/service for us.”

User adoption correlates tightly with customer retention, and yet, marketing gets them to the door and sales closes it, then marketing and sales sit on the porch and have a few beers. You’d think that an integrated marketing strategy include a retention investment, but it’s not.

Same with recruiting talent, regardless if we’re talking contingent, retainer, corporate, RPO — but the argument is that, after the final candidates are presented, even closed, “management” leadership takes over and whatever happens 3, 6, 12 months down the road, ain’t recruiting’s problem. Humans, Leaders, People are fallible and ain’t nothing I can do about that. This is a complex story.

But I’d argue that insightful leaders understand that reducing turnover, increasing team retention and improving overall quality of fit with workplace culture are huge initiatives in an ever-changing and highly competitive social talent economy. That means everybody pre- and post-onboarding on your team plays a role in “user adoption.” The recruiting technology and service industry may worth over $124 billion, but if inefficient talent acquisition and management keep bleeding me out, well, you do the math.

Recruiting IS marketing and sales. Are we on to something here? Marketing and sales should be customer service, but it’s not. Marketing and sales should be partners in retention. The models must change. Leadership must want to change first and the rest will follow. Let’s keep moving forward.

Thanks for being in our #TChat Community – We appreciate each of you. 

 

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Focus on Your Employees, Key to Workplace Culture Success

As an organization, your perceived workplace culture is a part of your brand. There are plenty of posts out there that discuss how your brand is more than just your logo. It is an overall perception and the emotional connection people make with who you are as an organization on a holistic level. Taking the complete package that we have come to understand as a brand is that which we market to our target audience. Marketing 101, right?

I would suggest that many organizations are dropping the ball  in marketing organizational culture to a specific market segment. This particular segment is so critical to the success of your company. It’s your employees. If you’re not leveraging the brilliance of your marketing department to reach out to your own people, you are leaving tons of money and talent on the table. Internal marketing is absolutely essential to be a major player in business…especially in the 21st century.

How do you communicate your workplace culture to your employees? Is it in their employee handbook, hanging on prominent walls in frames and the “mandatory” screensaver from HQ? How would you view your marketing department if their top notch marketing campaign only consisted of a blurb in your product/service user instructions, a refrigerator magnet and an invite to follow on Twitter? Pretty lame, huh?

So why does it seem good enough for your potentially best evangelists, your employees? Imagine a campaign that is collaboratively developed with input from the C-Suite, HR and Marketing on how to market to your employees. If it makes it easier, replace the word “employee” with “customer/client”. What would you do to market your culture effectively to them?

Why do your customers buy from you? You most likely meet a need in their life and they emotionally connect with your brand in some way or another. You’re employees need the same opportunity to create a connection in order to be the best they can possibly be. Without this, they will not offer their discretionary effort; which is where your bottom line profit realizes the most difference.

There isn’t a process or management tool that can demand a discretionary effort from any employee. It is only given by choice as a gift to the organization when they feel valued and connected. Values is a great place to start with your engagement marketing campaign. People connect so quickly with those. If you show people you plan to give them the freedom to the job you hired them to do without the “adult babysitting”, you will come out ahead as well.

See what your brainstorming brings to the surface when the C-Suite, HR and Marketing get together? It will be different for each company based on the vision and mission. It has to reach your target market, the employees, exactly where they are…not where you think they should be. Don’t demand them to come where you are. Go to them and walk with them as you travel to that place.

What can you do to market your workplace culture better to your employees?

IMAGE VIA Mmmonica

How to Promote Your Blog with an Empty Bank

I, like most of my fellow bloggers out there, do not have the funds necessary to launch national advertising campaigns to promote a blog. Therefore, since my team and I founded Career Rocketeer over a year ago, I have constantly faced the challenge of finding new, free and/or low-cost ways to promote our content, build up our blog’s awareness and increase our readership.

Thankfully, if you are creative and determined, you can uncover countless ways to promote your efforts without breaking the bank.

Here are a number of tips for promoting your blog on a dime from leaders throughout the blogosphere:

Looks matter. If your blog looks like and sounds like everyone else’s, no one is going to care. If your blog looks like crap, it doesn’t matter that you have the best content out there, no one is going to read it. We’re a superficial society so if you’re going to spend money on anything beyond a domain name and hosting, it should be on the design of your blog. – Brandon Mendelson, BrandonMendelson.com

Don’t bury your best content. Direct readers to your most popular postings using links, a featured articles section, a resources page etc. – Chris Groscurth, BareNakedCommunication.com

Linked on LinkedIn. One totally free and effective way to promote a blog is to post blog articles to the news section of your LinkedIn groups. You can now post articles to many groups simultaneously. You can also post the URLs to articles when you answer questions on the Answers section of LinkedIn. This gives your blog exposure. – Cheryl E. Palmer, CallToCareer.com

Don’t forget to feed your social media! The best thing I ever did for my blog was to have it automatically feed into my social media profiles. The headline and link go into Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Plaxo, and the full text goes into Facebook Notes. – Shel Horowitz, PrincipledProfit.com/Good-Business-Blog/

Status Updates. While this one may seem pretty obvious, it’s not that simple. Sure, you could just type your blog post’s headline into all of your social sites’ status boxes, include your shortened link and call it a day. But this might not maximize clicks. Realize that each social site is a little different (i.e. different environment, social etiquette, audience demo/psychographics). Tailoring your status/headline for each community could make a big difference. No time for that? Use Ping.fm. Plug in all your social networks and use Ping.fm to shorten your URL and launch your new post to all your sites in one step. Brody Dorland, SomethingCreativeInc.com

Help a reporter out. If you’re not using Help A Reporter Out (HARO) at www.helpareporter.com, you’re really missing out on an outstanding free resource.  On HARO, you can register for free to receive article and book topic queries from journalists, writers, bloggers and authors across multiple topic categories to which you can respond and pitch your relevant advice, experience or insights.  If selected, you almost always get some press, including your name and blog/company, as well as a link back to your preferred site.  This is a great (and FREE) way to get some visibility for your blog while networking with other leaders in your field. – Chris Perry, CareerRocketeer.com

Identify guest bloggers. Search out people who do things similar to what you do and ask them to be a guest blogger. They will likely tell their readers about your blog, resulting in a great promotion for you. Many bloggers will then ask you to guest blog for them. It becomes a winning situation. – Jill Nussinow, TheVeggieQueen.com

Become a guest blogger. One of the simplest strategies I’ve found to promoting a blog is to write guest posts for other blogs. The secret is to write for blogs that are just a little outside of your own niche — if you write about cooking for instance, write a guest post about cooking inexpensively for a personal finance blog. That approach will help you reach an audience beyond what your competition (the other blogs covering the same topics) sees. – Thursday R. Bram, ThursdayBram.com

Create lists. I know other bloggers get HUGE traffic out of doing lists like “Top 50 Blogs on Knitting”. Without fail, the authors of the majority of these blogs will link back to the referring site, even if that listing site has very few readers. Bloggers are vain, after all. I don’t often do stuff like that, but maybe I should. – The Cranky Product Manager, CrankyPM.com

Get listed. The best way I’ve found to promote my blog is find sites that list blogs about your topic and get on that list. For example, I got myself on WorldGolf.com’s blog list as well as TravelGolf.com’s list. It gives credibility and promotes your blog. It’s also listed on Wikio, BallHype and Golfblips. Usually all I have to do is put a link to their site, if anything at all. – Michael Wolfe, WAMGolf.com

Track how you’re doing. Take advantage of Google Analytics to track your traffic so you can see how people are finding you.  If you notice that a lot of people find you via “Best used cars,” you might want to write a few posts on that to keep the momentum going. – Jon Stroz, Accella.net

Get creative with bartering. If you offer a service and want some ad space, offer to trade your service for a free ad. For example, if you’re a wedding photographer who wants to get featured on a bride’s blog, offer a discount or a free shoot in exchange for exposure. – Mandy Boyle, SolidCactus.com

Latch onto a star! Here’s what I mean: For more than two years, I’ve blogged for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, a top-twenty American news site (40 million page views per month). Except for my time, my costs are zero. The domain is professional with ads galore, so there’s plenty of opportunity and it’s all over Google. – Roberta Beach Jacobson, Blog.SeattlePI.com/CatLady

Promote your blog offline. Instead of Twitter, use the local trade fair, or networking event (again, focus on making friends over networking).  Make business cards, but don’t “sell” people on anything.  Your business cards are a reminder for people to get in contact with you, not a desperate attempt to push your business/service on them.  Talk to as many people as possible.  Make friends not just “network”. – Zach Davis, ZRDavis.com

I want to give special thanks to all of the bloggers who contributed their blog marketing insights!  If you have some tips or other free or low-cost ways to promote a blog, please share them with us!

Chris Perry, MBA is a Gen Y brand and marketing generator, a career search and personal branding expert and the founder of Career Rocketeer, Launchpad, Blogaristo and more.